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Giveon was one of the many artists in 2020 to make the best of quarantine times and break out into the mainstream music world. He released two EPs, Take Time and When It’s All Said And Done, which were later repacked into one 13-song project When It’s All Said And Done… Take Time. However, after 2020 concluded, Giveon kept things a bit quieter outside of landing his first No. 1 song thanks to Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” with him and Daniel Caesar. Things could be picking up for Giveon and it comes as stopped by to 2021 American Music Awards to perform “Heartbreak Anniversary.”

The performance was both a soulful and stirring rendition of the highlight track from Take Time as the Long Beach singer used the moment to showcase his vocals to the world. Giveon’s performance at the AMAs is just the latest in what’s been an uptick in activity for the Long Beach singer. Back in September, Giveon released his first post-When It’s All Said And Done… Take Time era single with “For Tonight.” The emotive track finds the singer longing for a single moment of intimacy with a special woman in his life. He later delivered an intimate rendition of the song during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

You can watch clips from Giveon’s AMAs performance above.

We named Chloe as one of our rising pop stars to watch for 2022, but honestly, she’s already broken out in a big way as part of the duo with her sister, Chloe x Halle. In recent months, it’s been clear that despite the success of their sophomore album, Ungodly Hour, released in 2020, the two are both growing into solo careers as well. Halle was tapped to play Ariel in the new version of The Little Mermaid and Chloe was getting so much attention from simple social media posts, that she decided to release a debut single and video to go along with it.

So “Have Mercy” was born, and the single has been slowly but steadily racking up a dedicated fan base ever since. The song has already been covered by a HBCU marching band (or two), and Chloe raised eyebrows with an exuberant performance of the song at the VMAs. Tonight, she brought it back out for a performance at the AMAs, and as always, it didn’t disappoint. After descending down to the stage in a swing, the singer debuted her red-tinted hair for another dance-centric performance of her debut solo song. The audience was more than responsive to her high-energy performance, check it out above.

The pop girls said long songs are back! Well, in Adele’s case, it’s more of a theoretical thing. In a world that now contains a ten-minute version of Taylor Swift’s critically-acclaimed “All Too Well,” as part of the new Red (Taylor’s Version), Adele revealed in an interview this weekend that she almost joined in on the saga-length trend. As part of an earlier cover story with Rolling Stone, Adele revealed that the fan-favorite track off her new album, 30, was originally fifteen minutes long (!).

Her label talked some sense into the diva, though, pointing out that songs that long tend to struggle with audiences who have a shorter and shorter attention span. “[The label] was like, ‘Listen, everyone loves you, but no one’s playing a 15-minute song on radio,’” she noted in a new snippet shared from her cover interview with Rolling Stone. The song now clocks in around six minutes, and has already been memed due to the extremely relatable title, and as an answer to the sometimes unsolvable problems of heartache and relationship turmoil. Still, if there were ever an Easter egg to include on deluxe editions or at a later date, it’s the length original version of one of 30‘s best songs. Check it out above if you haven’t heard the song yet.

The American Music Awards featured a truly innovative performance when Bad Bunny, Julieta Venegas, and Tainy hit the stage to perform “Lo Siento BB:/” with a futuristic aesthetic that saw Julieta dressed as a robot with a television head (a la the Saga comic series) and Bad Bunny suited up as a cyclops robot that may remind viewers of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey or GLaDOS from the Portal games.

Bad Bunny has been everywhere in 2021, performing his hits “La Noche De Anoche” and “Te Deseo Lo Mejor” on Saturday Night Live, on which he also appeared in a goofy musical sketch in which he became a talking plant and sang about last year’s lockdowns; he performed “Dákiti” at the 2021 Grammy Awards; and he even got to live out a childhood dream, settling a Twitter feud with WWE wrestler The Miz at this year’s Wrestlemania, where he won decisively by pinning his foe.

He followed up that triumph by reprising “Te Deseo Lo Mejor” at the Billboard Music Awards, then set about launching his next new music campaign with “Yonaguni” and “De Museo” after announcing the tour dates for his 2022 circuit, El Último Tour Del Mundo — which took less than a week to become Ticketmaster’s fastest-selling tour in history. Unfortunately, his most recent planned performance at day two of Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival was scrapped in light of the disastrous incident that took place on the first night of the event, but with tonight’s performance, he bounced back nicely and, considering his deft handling of his last handful of performances, we can likely expect plenty of intriguing new moves from the Puerto Rican superstar soon.

Watch Bad Bunny’s AMAs performance above.

Olivia Rodrigo has had a massive year, and she’s not about to let anyone forget it. After her smash debut single “Drivers License” put her on the map in a massive way, she followed that up with not one but two other bangers, “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U,” before finally releasing her first full-length record, Sour. And the album was so packed with incredible songs that even tracks that weren’t initially slated as singles began to get a life of their own, including “Traitor,” which she chose to perform at the American Music Awards.

What else would we expect from Olivia after the year she’s had? Racking up fans like Taylor Swift and tonight’s award show host Cardi B, and even helping both Taylor and Paramore earn millions off their influence on Sour tracks, Rodrigo is very clearly just getting started. After a more than loving introduction from Cardi, Olivia took the stage in a classic pink gown, performing among a garden of darkened flowers, and playing guitar herself. Eventually the backdrop opened up into a whole cosmic sky, driving home how big the feelings in the song are. It definitely felt like the kind of romantic yet desolate setting the song deserved, and once again established Rodrigo as an excellent live performer. Check it out above and stay tuned for more AMAs performances, like BTS and Coldplay.

For his American Music Awards performance, Tyler The Creator popped out from backstage with a puffer jacket and his customary ushanka, rapping “Massa” in front of a house set in a snowy tableau. For some reason, he was wearing shorts. Unlike some of his previous performances, this one was relatively muted, as he stayed pretty much stationary in front of the door before stepping out into the snow, adding more and more passion to his performance while snow fell from the sky. And when the performance was done, he hopped on the back of a Vespa and cruised off the stage, as coolly as he entered.

Tyler The Creator’s big year kicked off in June with the release of the initial teasers for his new album, Call Me If You Get Lost. After putting up billboards promoting a phone number with a special, constantly-changing message from Tyler (which turned out to be the album’s interludes), he shared the first video, for “Lumberjack,” two weeks later.

He quickly followed up with a flurry of new videos and comedic sketches, including videos for “Wusyaname,” “Juggernaut,” and “Corso,” while his performance at the 2021 BET Awards solidified the hype for the album. Upon its release, it was critically acclaimed — you can read Uproxx’s own review here — and became his second album to debut at no. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Tyler also expanded his directorial portfolio with a music video for Maxo Kream, “Big Persona” (on which he also rapped), and a hilarious commercial for Converse that brought together NBA legend Bill Walton with gangsta-rap futurist Vince Staples. He certainly earned his slot on the AMAs’ appearance setlist, and his performance more than justified the show’s faith in him.

Watch Tyler The Creator’s AMAs performance above.

Coldplay decided to go ahead and shift to a full-on pop approach on their latest album, Music Of The Spheres, and that’s a good thing. Of course, if you want to go pop these days, there’s no better collaborator than K-pop icons BTS, and Chris Martin and co. immediately linked up with them for their “My Universe” collaboration and subsequent Suga remix. Giving fans the chance to see the song live, though, was a different story, as both bands tend to have fairly grueling touring schedules in a non-pandemic-impacted year. So what better place to make a live rendition of the song happen than at an award show? During tonight’s AMAs, the two bands joined together for a sparkling performance of “My Universe,” that may or may not have stolen the whole show a bit.

Even tonight’s legendary host, Cardi B, was reeling from the impact of the song, sharing earlier this weekend that she too wants to collaborate with these K-pop geniuses. Who wouldn’t? Check out their live performance with Coldplay above, and look out for more coming soon as the embark on a short string of tour dates in Los Angeles in early December. BTS never stops, and neither does their army of fans all across the universe.

Sunday night’s game between the Pistons and Lakers wasn’t circled on many calendars outside of those in Detroit who got themselves tickets to go see LeBron James, Anthony Davis and company. However, it became the lead story of the sports world in the third quarter after LeBron James hit Isaiah Stewart in the eye with an elbow/fist that caused a significant cut, earned James an ejection, and saw Stewart lose it trying to fight the Lakers.

On multiple occasions, Stewart broke free from his teammates and Pistons staffers trying to escort him back to the tunnel, including one time where he broke tackles like prime Bo Jackson and got very close to some of the Lakers who were still mulling about near midcourt.

Naturally, NBA Twitter immediately turned Stewart going wild into a meme and had some hilarious reactions to his effort to get after the Lakers. There were a lot of comparisons to football, as Stewart was not to be denied in his quest to get to the Lakers, ripping through people grabbing at him.

There was, of course, a Jim Ross/Stone Cold edit, as is the law of the internet.

And plenty of Thanksgiving themed jokes.

A lot of folks also pointed out the “effort” by the one cop on the left as Stewart broke free from Cunningham, as he stuck his hand out to gently say “please stop” as if that would accomplish anything.

There were also a lot of jokes about Russell Westbrook squaring up as Stewart came barreling towards them, as he had the hands up and ready in case Stewart broke all the way through.

In fairness to him, what is he going to do to stop a man as big as Stewart? Suspensions are surely coming and happily something really bad was avoided, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort from Stewart to rumble with everyone.

Nine months after Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — aka Silk Sonic — made the world instant fans with their debut single “Leave The Door Open,” SIlk Sonic delivered their debut album An Evening With Sonic earlier this month and boy did they deliver. The project came attached with nine songs and contributions from Thundercat, Bootsy Collins, James Fauntleroy, and D’Mile. In addition to “Leave The Door Open,” An Evening With Sonic was also led by “Skate” and new fan-favorite “Smokin’ Out The Window.” A little over a week after that album arrived, Silk Sonic brought their talents together to open the 2021 American Music Awards.

The duo kicked off the award show night with the performance of “Smokin’ Out The Window.” As expected, Bruno and .Paak were dressed to the nines for the performance as they passionately sang about a former lover who did them wrong. Their performance also looked very similar to the music video that was released with the track.

The performance arrives after Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak announced that they’d be hosting their own limited-edition Silk Sonic radio series on Apple Music. “Over the course of four one-hour episodes, the pair feature Silk Sonic-inspired sets of all of their favorite records, ranging from old-school hits to R&B jams, hip-hop, funk, disco, and everything in between,” a press release said about the show. “From surprise guests to even more surprising conversation, it’s your turn to be a fly on the wall and spend some time with the kings of smooth.”

You can watch Silk Sonic’s 2021 AMAs performance above.

An Evening With Sonic is out now via Aftermath/Atlantic. Get it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Lakers and Pistons met on Sunday night in a battle between two teams who were expected to be going in very different directions this season, which doesn’t typically result in hostility, but a scary scene broke out in Detroit after LeBron James elbowed Isaiah Stewart in the eye, causing him to bleed considerably, and Stewart then tried to fight the entire Lakers team.

The initial action took place battling for position on a free throw, where Stewart got a loose ball foul and James swung a his fist up high that caught Stewart in the eye. From there, Stewart tried to get after James and then on two separate occasions broke free of the Pistons coaches, teammates, and staffers who were trying to walk him to the locker room and sprinted back towards the Lakers.

Stewart would finally be walked to the tunnel, where he sprinted away again, this time trying to circle the bowels of Little Caesars Arena to re-enter the floor from another tunnel to fight the Lakers. It was as mad as you’ll see any NBA player in this kind of situation, as you rarely see someone repeatedly making a break for it after they’re grabbed by teammates, but Stewart, fairly understandably, was incensed as blood poured down his face.

It initially looked like an elbow, but some other replays showed it was more of a punch/swinging fist from James that caught Stewart in an ugly way.

It was a wild scene and, once Stewart was finally corralled, the referees assessed a Flagrant 2 to James for his elbow as he was ejected for the second time in his career and Stewart was given two technicals and ejected. At the time of the incident, the Pistons led 78-66 as the Lakers woes continued, and now we’ll await what further punishment comes for Stewart — who figures to be facing a healthy suspension for going after the Lakers numerous times — and if anything more is assessed to James for the elbow.